Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Centres and peripheries amongst archaeologists--archaeological theory after communism. (Debate).

Centres and peripheries amongst archaeologists--archaeological theory after communism. (Debate). I would like to invite Antiquity to help generate a new theoreticalagenda in the wake of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe--butnot by imposing current western archaeological theory Archaeological theory covers the debates over the practice of archaeology and the interpretation of archaeological results. There is no single theory of archaeology, and even definitions are disputed. on us. EasternEuropean archaeologists need the chance to develop a post-communistarchaeology which still has a scientific basis. Seen from a distance, the history of western archaeology looks likea chronicle of intellectual borrowings. It started within the artparadigm, then shifted to science, but never succeeded in becoming itsown science; it was a sort of parasitical science because it lived uponborrowed theories. Doubts that material processes could explain humannature led to doubts about the archaeological version of science. As theparadigm of science started to fade, attention returned gradually toart. Not to the history of art but to the business of producing works ofart, the result of the archaeological "imagination". If in1973, David Clark David Clark or Dave Clark can refer to different people: David Clark (cartoonist), an illustrator David Clark (cricketer), a former English cricketer David Clark (guitar player), an American guitar player, folklorist, and newspaper columnist had denounced the transformation of archaeology intoan "irresponsible art form", in the nineties (afterdeconstructing supra-individual concepts such as "culture","holism holismIn the philosophy of the social sciences, the view that denies that all large-scale social events and conditions are ultimately explicable in terms of the individuals who participated in, enjoyed, or suffered them. " or "system") archaeological artistry was acommon-place. The hidden use of rhetoric (as Middle Range Theory orethnoarchaeology Ethnoarchaeology is the ethnographic study of peoples for archaeological reasons, usually focusing on the material remains of a society, rather than its culture. Ethnoarchaeology aids archaeologists in reconstructing ancient lifeways by studying the material and non-material ) had become, in post-processualism, an open use ofrhetoric, i.e. subjective creation similar to that used to produce awork of art. Seen in a temporal perspective, modern archaeologicaltheory has rejected syntheses. From the sixties, archaeological theoryhas been a-historical, because processes and ethnology ethnology(ĕthnŏl`əjē), scientific study of the origin and functioning of human cultures. It is usually considered one of the major branches of cultural anthropology, the other two being anthropological archaeology and werea-historical. Every theory adopted by the west has been fundamentalist, i.e.tries all by itself to win the competition to explain the complexity ofreality. But the utility of an all-embracing explanation is counteractedby its relatively short life. Even if a theory was not completelyburied, it was replaced by a new one, a process that would not beacceptable in other sciences. So human cognition Human cognition is the study of how the human brain thinks. As a subject of study, human cognition tends to be more than only theoretical in that its theories lead to working models that demonstrate behavior similar to human thought. has become a product ofwhich consumers quickly tire. As contemporary archaeology is a mimetic mimetic/mi��met��ic/ (mi-met��ik) pertaining to or exhibiting imitation or simulation, as of one disease for another. mi��met��icadj.1. Of or exhibiting mimicry.2. science, and as recycling is in fashion now, it would be good if someold theories, such as holism and systems theory could be revived. Oneway a theoretical framework can both dominate and endure is throughpolitical coercion, for example Marxism (in fact a popular Marxism) asapplied in eastern Europe. The equivalent in the Western World is"political correctness"--a type of moral self-censorshipsimilar to that imposed by totalitarian societies. Marxism wasprivileged by the blocking of criticism, and earned little disapprovalbecause it was adopted by the intellectual elite. Eastern Marxismremains the main cause for the impotence of theory in the socialist campand the main source of isolationism isolationismNational policy of avoiding political or economic entanglements with other countries. Isolationism has been a recurrent theme in U.S. history. It was given expression in the Farewell Address of Pres. . This also explains why EasternEurope did not develop a single national school in archaeology, in spiteof the determination of the system to promote national communism. Acommon feature for many parts of Eastern Europe was a reaction totheory, imposed by popular Marxism, by inventing new cultures fromregional aspects of old cultures, and through a minute description ofmaterial culture. A few variations developed according to thegeographical distance from the Iron Curtain: while in the seventies theideas of a Czech archaeologist were being promoted in Antiquity, andbeing accepted by western scholars, by contrast Romania, for instance,was embracing cultural models inspired by North Korea In general, whileWestern archaeology was losing its innocence, Eastern archaeology wasgradually returning to the primitive innocence of its childhood. Suddenly, at the end of the eighties, the Iron Curtain opened andtwo structurally different worlds met: on the one hand, an a-historicalworld, offering ephemeral global theories but without synthesis, and onthe other hand, a historical world rejecting its variant of Marxism andtrying to offer synthesis without theories. Eastern archaeology'sloss of innocence is not yet on the agenda. The process so far has beencompletely uninventive, partly due to the deception of thecommodity-like paradigms marketed by the west. The tragedy is that theEast, having failed in the decade since perestroika to produce onesingle globally-accepted theory, seems to be now mentally subordinatedto Western "archaeocentrism"--the western posture ofintellectual governance--and is therefore suffering from inertia and asense of being on the periphery. I think that at the beginning of thenew millennium, Antiquity should take into account the tension betweenthese two intellectual contexts and mentalities and, in particularencourage every genuine theoretical contribution from the East. Dragos Gheorghiu, University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania.(dgeorghiu@digi.ro)

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